I haven't got and iPOD yet, but my husband got one given to him for Christmas and he is loving it! He has downloaded lots of songs to listen to when he goes to the gym!!
I had a look at a couple of the sites listed and have already told my husband a whole lot of songs that he can download onto a CD for a 70 year old friend of ours who loves his jazz - free stuff - wahoo!
The first site I visited was Amazon.com. This was really easy to navigate around and there was a list of music genres to choose from so it is quite easy to see what is available in each genre. Because I chose "Christian" as a genre, there was too much selection but I did see a couple of artists' albums that I would probably download being Fred Hammond and some jazz titles such as Easy River Drive by Grover Washington Jnr, Original Jazz Classics and a free sampler of Jazz Legends.
The next website I looked at was AmieStreet.com
This one, I felt was even more user friendly that Amazon.com. The tags along the top gave you options such as " Music you love", "Top 25 Playlist", and "Create your own playlist." As a new browser I found these tags straight forward and easy to understand. It had a drop down menu with all the different music genres amd the How? for Creating a Playlist, on the R.H.S of the website a useful guide for a novice like me.
Click "Options" button
Click "Add to playlist" next to any song
Click "Create playlist"
And then continue.... until you have a playlist to enjoy :)
Apparently this site is just like iTunes when it comes to creating, managing and listening to songs.
I wouldn't know, but that what the website tells me! One day when I embrace this musical frontier, and I will be able to check this out more thoroughly for myself.
Until then... I will just have to refer my customers to these sites when they are illegally downloading material! If I can understand the instructions, then I will have no trouble navigating them around the site - in fact, our patrons may not need my help at all!
It would probably be a good idea for some one to design a template with all these Free and legal sites listed on it, so that we can leave them to it. Perhaps that could be a small task that I could do when I am next rostered on the Learn.net......
That's me signing out for another week - one more to go....
Jesus Freak
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Monday, May 10, 2010
Good things about "Good Reads"
Well - it's week 4 now with the Web 2.0 Challenge and I am making good progress! Good Reads is essentially a "Book Lovers" social networking site.
I listened to the tutorial and it all seemed pretty straight-forward when it comes to signing up and setting up a profile - similar to other social networking sites like Facebook or Bebo. You can upload photos, add widgets, join different groups (book clubs) and you can find friends and follow what they are reading or reviewing. As the old syaing goes, "You can learn a lot about a person by the books they read - or have on their bookshelf!
Key features:
* Create your own custom profile
* Track what you have read and rate the books (like a review in My Library)
* Find out what your friends are reading
* Get good book recommendations
* Join Reading Groups
GOOD READS is a great social networking sites for librarians. There are some very useful features on this site such as the ability to click on a book and view cataloguing details e.g ISBN number, what the average score for the book is, as assessed by readers, and all the editions of the book that have been printed, along with the Literary Awards the book has received, where applicable.
I like the "explore" tab feature which allows the viewer to browse everything from "popular" titles to "unpopular" titles, events, trivia, quizzes and quotes - very useful for Book Club stuff!
Similar to "My Library," you can write reviews and you can also see the reviews your friends have written. There a more options too, that you can add to your review, such as commenting on who recommended the tilte to you, how many times you have read the book, and whether you actually own a copy of the book!
I am going to enjoy seeing the answers to my "challenge" question, when I build a set of "friends."
TTFN!
Jesus Freak
I listened to the tutorial and it all seemed pretty straight-forward when it comes to signing up and setting up a profile - similar to other social networking sites like Facebook or Bebo. You can upload photos, add widgets, join different groups (book clubs) and you can find friends and follow what they are reading or reviewing. As the old syaing goes, "You can learn a lot about a person by the books they read - or have on their bookshelf!
Key features:
* Create your own custom profile
* Track what you have read and rate the books (like a review in My Library)
* Find out what your friends are reading
* Get good book recommendations
* Join Reading Groups
GOOD READS is a great social networking sites for librarians. There are some very useful features on this site such as the ability to click on a book and view cataloguing details e.g ISBN number, what the average score for the book is, as assessed by readers, and all the editions of the book that have been printed, along with the Literary Awards the book has received, where applicable.
I like the "explore" tab feature which allows the viewer to browse everything from "popular" titles to "unpopular" titles, events, trivia, quizzes and quotes - very useful for Book Club stuff!
Similar to "My Library," you can write reviews and you can also see the reviews your friends have written. There a more options too, that you can add to your review, such as commenting on who recommended the tilte to you, how many times you have read the book, and whether you actually own a copy of the book!
I am going to enjoy seeing the answers to my "challenge" question, when I build a set of "friends."
TTFN!
Jesus Freak
Friday, April 30, 2010
Lesson 2 - Zamzar
I found Zamzar a really useful tool. It took a wee while to convert my word documen into a pdf either, about 3 -5 minutes. but I felt it would be worth the wait if I was in the predicament of trying to get access to a document that was saved in format that couldn't be opnened.
In terms of use in the library, I can confidently say that it will come in use. I had a customer come in last year with a document that our learn.net computer couldn't recognise and obviously open. All I could do at the time was suggest to her that she go back home and save the document in a different format. From memory I think it was a .exe file. It would have been very helpful if I had known about Zamzar back then...!
I am sure that I will have other opportunities to share this online file conversion tool with other library patrons and with my friends. In fact, I have already shown my husband this site and saved it in our "Favourites" for future reference!
I particularly like the fact that you don't have to create an account to be able to use Zamzar.
In terms of use in the library, I can confidently say that it will come in use. I had a customer come in last year with a document that our learn.net computer couldn't recognise and obviously open. All I could do at the time was suggest to her that she go back home and save the document in a different format. From memory I think it was a .exe file. It would have been very helpful if I had known about Zamzar back then...!
I am sure that I will have other opportunities to share this online file conversion tool with other library patrons and with my friends. In fact, I have already shown my husband this site and saved it in our "Favourites" for future reference!
I particularly like the fact that you don't have to create an account to be able to use Zamzar.
Friday, April 23, 2010
2010 Web 2.0
I am excited that I have an opportunity to refine my understanding of all the great new programmes and features available "online." Some I will be familiar with, and some will be completely new to me. I haven't "twittered" as yet, so that will be something I know that I will be learning this time around.
The lesson on converting files will definitly be useful in the library setting. Just the other day my husband asked me whether I could convert a PDF that he had recevied into a word document so he could select some pages to print. I was not able to do so. I asked some staff at the libary whether this was possible. I was told that you can convert a word document to a PDF, but you can't reverse the process, which I already knew, but I wasn't sure why I could get into the document. Perhaps after completing lesson 2, I may discover that this can actually be done! Alternatively I may discover what online tools will enable this to be done - Zamzar hopefully?!!
One time in the library a patron came with a C.V wasn't able to opened because it was in a file that windows 7 didn't recognise. I imagine that this lesson will help me resolve this type of problem so that we can assist patrons to access the information they have on their USB.
I would like to know more about music files and using MP3 files as I know nothing about this at all! My husband was given an IPOD for Christmas and he is doing all this type of stuff so I need to "catch up!" Young people are into this in a big way these days so any learning on this will be very useful in assisting patrons. As a library professional I want to be able to talk "intelligently" about this to our patrons and able to make recommendations of other sites or tools available to assist them to get the stuff they want to listen to without breaching copyright (hopefully)!
Social networking sites continue to be a hit with many of our library patrons. I have had queries from new users about downloading pictures onto these sites and I would value some more practice with this. I have downloaded photos onto my "Facebook" site, but I haven't done so with Bebo so I look forward to trying some new feature and techniques to beautify my site! I wonder what is in store for me in this lesson?
I am ready and willing - Web 2.0 2010 - here I come!
Jesus Freak
The lesson on converting files will definitly be useful in the library setting. Just the other day my husband asked me whether I could convert a PDF that he had recevied into a word document so he could select some pages to print. I was not able to do so. I asked some staff at the libary whether this was possible. I was told that you can convert a word document to a PDF, but you can't reverse the process, which I already knew, but I wasn't sure why I could get into the document. Perhaps after completing lesson 2, I may discover that this can actually be done! Alternatively I may discover what online tools will enable this to be done - Zamzar hopefully?!!
One time in the library a patron came with a C.V wasn't able to opened because it was in a file that windows 7 didn't recognise. I imagine that this lesson will help me resolve this type of problem so that we can assist patrons to access the information they have on their USB.
I would like to know more about music files and using MP3 files as I know nothing about this at all! My husband was given an IPOD for Christmas and he is doing all this type of stuff so I need to "catch up!" Young people are into this in a big way these days so any learning on this will be very useful in assisting patrons. As a library professional I want to be able to talk "intelligently" about this to our patrons and able to make recommendations of other sites or tools available to assist them to get the stuff they want to listen to without breaching copyright (hopefully)!
Social networking sites continue to be a hit with many of our library patrons. I have had queries from new users about downloading pictures onto these sites and I would value some more practice with this. I have downloaded photos onto my "Facebook" site, but I haven't done so with Bebo so I look forward to trying some new feature and techniques to beautify my site! I wonder what is in store for me in this lesson?
I am ready and willing - Web 2.0 2010 - here I come!
Jesus Freak
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
REFLECTIONS ON THE 23 THINGS....
The online Web 2.0 learning has been a very worthwhile experience. It has been great to explore so many aspects on the web that I would probably not venture in the normal course of life as a librarian.
I enjoyed the session on e-books and kindle and finding out about websites such as Technoratti that keeps surfers up to date with all the new advances in web technologies. Learning about flicker and having a "play" with some of the programmes where you can "doctor up" photo's to make them look older or give people a "face lift" was a laugh!
Learning how to use RSS feeds to send new postings of articles was very useful but it now is a bit burdensome as you also have to keep up with reading them as they soon pile up quickly!
Exploring the social networking sites was a useful exercise as highlighted the unique features of these sites. So many people come into the library to use "bebo" and I was curious as to the differences between bebo, myspace and facebook as there are different friends of my who use these vehicles to communicate. I have found the "Old Friends" network a useful vehicle in which to catch up with folks but it is limited in ways that bebo and facebook aren't.
Exploring Web 2.0 online tools was one of the most relevant tasks to our field of work . Sites such as Library thing are fantastic. I enjoyed publishing my reading interests and hobies on our blog using widgets. I particularly like the way that the book titles are rotated around so that everytime you log on to the blog you get a different selection - very cool!
YouTube will always be a favourite site as there are limitless vidoclips that you can view! Many young people spend all their time up on the learn.net looking at clips of their favourite hip hop artists. It is also a very easy way to publish movies you've taken from your mobile and "show it to the world." There are lots of "exhibitionists" publishing clips, but there are excellent training videos that we also watched courtesy of youTube. There are some really funny animals clips and "bloopers" that are great to cheer you up on a bad day!
The exercise on wiki's was very informative and it clarified for me that wiki's are a useful way of publishing information on any number of topics. I was interesting to find out how easy it was for anyone to publish infomation and comment on other people's entries. Students comonly use wikipedia to get information for homework tasks and teachers frequently encourage students to use other websites because the information provided can be too "long-winded" or complicated for most students.
I enjoyed the session on e-books and kindle and finding out about websites such as Technoratti that keeps surfers up to date with all the new advances in web technologies. Learning about flicker and having a "play" with some of the programmes where you can "doctor up" photo's to make them look older or give people a "face lift" was a laugh!
Learning how to use RSS feeds to send new postings of articles was very useful but it now is a bit burdensome as you also have to keep up with reading them as they soon pile up quickly!
Exploring the social networking sites was a useful exercise as highlighted the unique features of these sites. So many people come into the library to use "bebo" and I was curious as to the differences between bebo, myspace and facebook as there are different friends of my who use these vehicles to communicate. I have found the "Old Friends" network a useful vehicle in which to catch up with folks but it is limited in ways that bebo and facebook aren't.
Exploring Web 2.0 online tools was one of the most relevant tasks to our field of work . Sites such as Library thing are fantastic. I enjoyed publishing my reading interests and hobies on our blog using widgets. I particularly like the way that the book titles are rotated around so that everytime you log on to the blog you get a different selection - very cool!
YouTube will always be a favourite site as there are limitless vidoclips that you can view! Many young people spend all their time up on the learn.net looking at clips of their favourite hip hop artists. It is also a very easy way to publish movies you've taken from your mobile and "show it to the world." There are lots of "exhibitionists" publishing clips, but there are excellent training videos that we also watched courtesy of youTube. There are some really funny animals clips and "bloopers" that are great to cheer you up on a bad day!
The exercise on wiki's was very informative and it clarified for me that wiki's are a useful way of publishing information on any number of topics. I was interesting to find out how easy it was for anyone to publish infomation and comment on other people's entries. Students comonly use wikipedia to get information for homework tasks and teachers frequently encourage students to use other websites because the information provided can be too "long-winded" or complicated for most students.
The lesson on podcasts was useful as many schools have their own websites and are making podcasts to show their community what they are learning. Many pastors enjoy the convenience of listening to their favourite preachers via podcasts. This technology is rapidly becoming the favoured was for students studying "long distance" so having a knowledge about what's available and some of the most popular sites where you can access podcasts was very helpful.
I found this course of study a novel experience and I am grateful to have been given the opportunity to undertake Web 2.0 training as a reasonably new librarian.
Jesus Freak
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
e-books
Here we are..... the last lesson for Web 2.0 training. This has been a GREAT experience and it has opened up many new worlds for me to discover. There are still aspects that I am trying to master but I know that I have benefitted from this training and will be able to put a lot of the new learning to good use in the library setting.
I was interested to see on the home page of ebooks.com the book "The Shack" as this was the book that we bought for our pastors and leaders in the church for Christmas. I heard that this book was a #1 New York times best seller, so it must be a good read! (I haven't read it yet!). Apparently there are 130,000 popular, professional and academic ebooks from the world's leading publishers available for the reader to access.
I was quite chuffed when I was successfully able to post an excerpt of this book onto the blog! It was easy to post on my blog as it supplied some straight-forward guidelines about whether to use a small widget and large widget and even the fact that some blogs don't recognise Java script - which was a very useful comment.
I clicked on to Project Guttenburg and decided to investigate the "Top 100 EBooks. What did I discover? On the 2 February 2009, 96,000 odd EBooks were downloaded! WOW!
Top 100 EBooks yesterday - 3rd February 2009 :
The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) by J. Arthur Thomson (955)
Manners, Customs, and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period by P. L. Jacob (676)
Illustrated History of Furniture by Frederick Litchfield (509)
Searchlights on Health by B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols (367)
The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana by Vatsyayana (347)
History of the United States by Charles A. Beard and Mary Ritter Beard (326)
Our Day by William Ambrose Spicer (310)
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (307)
Ulysses by James Joyce (274)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (269)
The Beginner's American History by D. H. Montgomery (266)
General Science by Bertha M. Clark (266)
Woman as Decoration by Emily Burbank (258)
The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English by Ray Vaughn Pierce (257)
Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany by Douglas Houghton Campbell (234)
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (229)
The Practice and Science of Drawing by Harold Speed (222)
The Mafulu by Robert Wood Williamson (218)
Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome by E.M. Berens (218)
Discoverers and Explorers by Edward R. Shaw (215)
Very interesting to see the types ofbooks people are downloading. There are real "classics" such as Pride and Prejudice, Huckleberry Finn, and Alice in Wonderland, as well as books on American history, science and even the karma sutra! Very interesting!
I was interested to see on the home page of ebooks.com the book "The Shack" as this was the book that we bought for our pastors and leaders in the church for Christmas. I heard that this book was a #1 New York times best seller, so it must be a good read! (I haven't read it yet!). Apparently there are 130,000 popular, professional and academic ebooks from the world's leading publishers available for the reader to access.
I was quite chuffed when I was successfully able to post an excerpt of this book onto the blog! It was easy to post on my blog as it supplied some straight-forward guidelines about whether to use a small widget and large widget and even the fact that some blogs don't recognise Java script - which was a very useful comment.
I clicked on to Project Guttenburg and decided to investigate the "Top 100 EBooks. What did I discover? On the 2 February 2009, 96,000 odd EBooks were downloaded! WOW!
Top 100 EBooks yesterday - 3rd February 2009 :
The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) by J. Arthur Thomson (955)
Manners, Customs, and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period by P. L. Jacob (676)
Illustrated History of Furniture by Frederick Litchfield (509)
Searchlights on Health by B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols (367)
The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana by Vatsyayana (347)
History of the United States by Charles A. Beard and Mary Ritter Beard (326)
Our Day by William Ambrose Spicer (310)
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (307)
Ulysses by James Joyce (274)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (269)
The Beginner's American History by D. H. Montgomery (266)
General Science by Bertha M. Clark (266)
Woman as Decoration by Emily Burbank (258)
The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English by Ray Vaughn Pierce (257)
Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany by Douglas Houghton Campbell (234)
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (229)
The Practice and Science of Drawing by Harold Speed (222)
The Mafulu by Robert Wood Williamson (218)
Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome by E.M. Berens (218)
Discoverers and Explorers by Edward R. Shaw (215)
Very interesting to see the types ofbooks people are downloading. There are real "classics" such as Pride and Prejudice, Huckleberry Finn, and Alice in Wonderland, as well as books on American history, science and even the karma sutra! Very interesting!
When it came to the most popular authors it was a closely fought race between Charles Dickens and Mark Twain, followed by Sir Arthur conan Doyle, William Shakespeare and Jane Austen.
Our last optional discovery exercise is to find out about Amazon's kindle. As I am one of the trainers with the "Best Sellers", I am already aware of the features of the Kindle. It is a wonderful gadget that combines the features of a book in terms of it's dimension and shape with the convenience of a computer where you can download a book to read and scroll down the pages. I haven't seen anyone with one in New Zealand yet, but give this invention a few moe years and it may become as popular as the personal computer - who knows!
If you want to check out this new innovation click on the link below:
http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Amazons-Wireless-Reading-Device/dp/B000FI73MA
That's it for now! Signing off.....
Jesus Freak
Thursday, January 29, 2009
More Web 2.0 discoveries!
Podcasts
I enjoyed listening to a YouTubevideo on podcasting which I found on ipodder.com from our "friends at commoncraft". I have wondered where the name "podcast" came from, and I now know it means "Personal/On/Demand." A podcast is defined as "a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program, made available on the Internet for downloading to a personal audio player. There are thousands of podcasts are available at the iTunes Music Store, and websites such as iPodder.com and Podcast.net track thousands more.
When I was exploring podcast alley it was great to see that podcasts are categorised just like books are categorised and you could see the top 10 podcasts downloaded (mostly about sex!) and those that were more recently added to the list. I decided to have a look at the "Religion and Spirituality" genre out of curiosity to see if there were any preachers that I was interested in. There were 2545 to selcet from! WOW! Very impressive. The podcasts were listed by their title. No. 10 on the list sounded interesting and when I clicked on the title a brief descriptor appeared which outlined what the podcast was all about - cool feature! Pray-as-you-go was not a sermon or a bible-study, but provided a framework for your own prayer, combining music, scripture and questions for reflection (10-12 minute prayer session) that you can receive every day. At No. 273 was a "Drive time Devotions" from Saddleback church. Browsing down the list there seemed to be a lot of Catholic based stuff and pagan stuff which doesn't interest me at all.
Podcast.com looked much more appealing and it was neat how they showed a selcetion of podcasts on their homepage as well as an index on the RHS for you to select from e.g "What's in the news " and "digital planet".
I had an enjoyable time viewing the host of sites and RSS feeds that I could select from to fill up all my waking hours! All I need now is the iPod! Now which one will I start with......
Bye for now
Jesus Freak
I enjoyed listening to a YouTubevideo on podcasting which I found on ipodder.com from our "friends at commoncraft". I have wondered where the name "podcast" came from, and I now know it means "Personal/On/Demand." A podcast is defined as "a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program, made available on the Internet for downloading to a personal audio player. There are thousands of podcasts are available at the iTunes Music Store, and websites such as iPodder.com and Podcast.net track thousands more.
When I was exploring podcast alley it was great to see that podcasts are categorised just like books are categorised and you could see the top 10 podcasts downloaded (mostly about sex!) and those that were more recently added to the list. I decided to have a look at the "Religion and Spirituality" genre out of curiosity to see if there were any preachers that I was interested in. There were 2545 to selcet from! WOW! Very impressive. The podcasts were listed by their title. No. 10 on the list sounded interesting and when I clicked on the title a brief descriptor appeared which outlined what the podcast was all about - cool feature! Pray-as-you-go was not a sermon or a bible-study, but provided a framework for your own prayer, combining music, scripture and questions for reflection (10-12 minute prayer session) that you can receive every day. At No. 273 was a "Drive time Devotions" from Saddleback church. Browsing down the list there seemed to be a lot of Catholic based stuff and pagan stuff which doesn't interest me at all.
Podcast.com looked much more appealing and it was neat how they showed a selcetion of podcasts on their homepage as well as an index on the RHS for you to select from e.g "What's in the news " and "digital planet".
I had an enjoyable time viewing the host of sites and RSS feeds that I could select from to fill up all my waking hours! All I need now is the iPod! Now which one will I start with......
Bye for now
Jesus Freak
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